October 9, 2014

Little Visible Things

image by Umair Asim, Lahore, Pakistan

While processing this image Umair noticed an S (sort of) white band on the right part of the image. He strongly enhanced the image so the white S band is more prominent. He also noticed a white square-ish patch at 4 o clock, right-centeron the edge of the S. I love it when imagers carefully look at their images at the science as well as the image processing. In this case, the large bright S is the boundary between the young blue/dark lavas around the edges of much of Serenitatis, and the older, yellow lavas in the middle of the basin's floor. The colors come from the Clementine color imaging. The square-ish bright patch is a cluster of secondary craters whose ejecta includes a bright nimbus that makes the patch visible even though the craters are too small to be resolved. I lightened the west side of Umair's image to bring out some other interesting geologic features. Near upper left is a narrow, curved bright line, which is the gentle rise of the edge of the Valentine Dome. Immediately below it are a few, broad swells, where magma lifted up the surface, but didn't break through. Near center-left of the image are two mare ridges, one long and one short, both extending north-south. The long one is the officially named von Cotta Ridge, and the other one has no designation, for it is hardly visible except in illuminations as low as this. At the south end of the short ridge is a recently seen volcanic vent, and the lone peak north of the long ridge is actually the rim of the crater Linné. And keep looking - this image includes some additional prizes.

Chuck Wood

Technical Details
Telescope: 127 APO Triplet; Camera: DMK21 mono; Mount: Celestron CGEM DX; IR Cut filter; 60 frames per second; 3,000 frames stacked out of 30,000 with AutoStakkert, Registax, PS5.

Related Links
21st Century Atlas charts 11 & B5
Umair's website

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